The way thenceforth is not quite so plain; but one cannot go far wrong by taking a green lane to the left and keeping pretty straight south up a central ridge-way till a glimpse of the tower is gained in the wood. Did one hold rather too much to the left, the worst of it would be wandering into the road at Coldharbour. Holding more to the right, one comes into a deep hollow above Wotton, where the ponds and cascades of the Tillingbourne lead up to Broadmoor, a model village among meadows opening out in the woods. The narrowing hollow takes one straight to the tower by a beautiful and gradual ascent; but this route is not the best in wet weather. It properly belongs to the next line to be indicated, the base of which is Wotton, lying about midway between Dorking and Gomshall station.
Wotton is famous as the seat of John Evelyn, the diarist, and author of _Sylva_, who put his knowledge of trees so well in practice, that his hand is still seen not only about this _Wood town_ but in other garden grounds of the county. Blackheath was an _alias_ of the parish, which it perhaps better deserved before he set an example of planting the hill with his favourite firs; yet the estate must have been already well timbered, according to the account he gives of its sylvan wealth. On the high-road, up a stiff ascent beyond the Rookery, comes the inn called "Wotton Hatch," beside the Park gate. Opposite this a way turns down to the Church, which lies below the north side of the road, beautifully embowered on a knoll, with the Deerleap Wood beyond it, and the coombe of Pickett's Hole as invitation for a steep climb on the Downs.
In the Evelyn chapel of this church, "the dormitory of my ancestors, near to that of my father and pious mother," is the coffin-shaped tomb of John Evelyn, of whom his epitaph may tell without falsehood how, "Living in an age of Events and Revolutions, he learnt (as himself asserted) this Truth which, pursuant to his Intention, is here declared--That all is Vanity which is not Honest, and that there is no solid Wisdom but in real Piety." Of the other family monuments the most noticeable is Westmacott's memorial to Captain George Evelyn, with an inscription by Arnold of Rugby. In the churchyard stands the tomb of William Glanville, on which is still performed a ceremony devised by this kinsman of the Evelyns, to keep his memory green among successive rising generations. Dying 1718, by his will he directed forty shillings apiece to be paid to five poor boys of Wotton, below sixteen, who on the anniversary of his death should repeat by heart, with their hands laid on his gravestone, the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, and the Decalogue, also as a further proof of scholarship reading 1 Corinthians xv., and writing legibly the first two verses. The Church porch in John Evelyn's time was a school where, he tells us, he himself got the elements of learning, before _not_ going to Eton, from which he was scared away by fear of the rod.